August 09, 2007

About DC Metro Moms Blog & Our Contributors

DC Metro Moms Blog is a collaborative group of moms writing about their lives in Washington, D.C., where moms live and work in the shadow of the Capitol, Beltway driving is the adventure sport of choice, the Mall is flanked by national monuments instead of anchor stores, and bipartisan playdates easily gain constituency approval.

Aimee Olivo is the mom of two beautiful boys, Lucas and Nathaniel,
and the wife of an amazing and supportive husband, Abel. She's
now a stay-at-home mom (who is rarely actually home!) and a community
volunteer who tries to live by the principle that each one of us has the
responsibility to help make our world a better place.

Aimee believes in kindness and loves lists. And, if you invite her to
your meeting, you can pretty much be assured that she will volunteer to
do something!

Aimee blogs about her busy but very fun life at Smiling
Mama and about family-friendly activities in Prince George's
County, MD at Out by Ten.

Amiemoved
to DC in 1993 to save the world, leaving behind a challenging
eight-week career as a Christmas hire for a large department store in
St. Petersburg, Florida. Her political science degree from Tulane University
was never intended to be used in the Nation's capital, but nearly
fifteen years later and still working in politics, she's reluctantly
ready to admit that it might have come in handy. Though if she's
honest, she learned more about being a successful political consultant
by slaving away for years at large reproductive health non-profit, the
fact that helps to allay her guilt over now working to increase the
political voice of corporate America.

Nowadays,
Amie is raising three boys (11, 5 and 3) with her husband in the same
Northern Virginia suburb where he grew up. She maintains a sneaking
suspicion that her in-laws are enjoying the fact that she is enduring
the same little league politics that they survived oh so many years
ago. When not at the ball field,
she's trying not to kill the plants in her garden, hanging out on the
corner jawing with her neighbors or off to the family beach house in Rehoboth Beach, DE. Amie started her personal blog
in 2006 as a place to dump the random thoughts floating through her
head. The unexpected side effect has been an introduction to a
fascinating community and a much lighter, humorous perspective on life.

Amy grew up in rural Pennsylvania exactly five miles from where her great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather lived after moving to the colonies from Germany.Thinking it was about to time to broaden the family's horizons, Amy convinced a Texan that moving to Washington, DC, was a great compromise and thus began her life as a Federal government wife keeping house in the DC 'burbs.

Before becoming a mom, Amy survived a few years as a middle school English and drama teacher where she alternated between teaching angry youth the importance of paragraph structure and asking a basement classroom filled with 38 tweens to play charades...and receive a grade for doing so.Life at home with two unruly little ones has proven to be far more rewarding, and Amy has built a freelance writing turned social media marketing career in order to stay out of the classroom.This arrangement benefits not only her children but the many other unsuspecting children who would have had to suffer through her interpretation of Animal Farm.

Amy launched her personal blog,Resourceful Mommy, in the summer of 2008, and began pro-blogging and marketing shortly after.Her blogger network, Global Influence, and weekly Twitter parties continue to take most of her non-parenting time while her writing remains her (often neglected) passion.Occasionally she finds time to clean and cook, though not often enough to mention, and sleep has moved on to the endangered species activity list as well.While the Texan may not agree, she still thinks it's all worth it and loves her life as a mom outside of the Beltway.

Another transplant to the DC metro area from the Keystone state,
Amy M. is a Reading Specialist who taught high school English in two of
the area’s highest-performing counties. As much as she loved a heated
discussion on The Taming of the Shrew or to teach the parts of
speech, Amy—the naïve young thing she was--actually thought life would
be easier as a stay-at-home mom. Three babies and four years later,
she will quickly say that being at home with her children is NOT
easier, and, though her children are what she is most proud of in her
life, there are days when she tries to sneak into her husband’s
briefcase and enjoy a quiet commute to anywhere. She’s just now
emerging from the fog of non-stop dirty diapers, sleeplessness, and
bottle-washing and feels pumped that she can finally (almost) carry on
a coherent conversation with adults and leave the house with two
matching earrings.

A lover of backyard happy hours, good
beer, and any chance to laugh with her three sisters, Amy is a
testament to the fact that sometimes blind dates actually do work out
and you can meet your prince charming-- even if the date is set up by
your mother-in-law and he’s broken his leg on a soccer field the week
before. You just better hope with all your might that the stars are
aligned and that maybe, just maybe, you did a few things right in your
life. Currently, Amy’s navigating her way through cyber-world on her
site, teachmama,
which chronicles the sneaky ways she tries to fit some kind of learning
into her children’s daily lives. And in the short amount of time that
she’s not busy tutoring other students, planning activities for her
local MOMS’ group, or dragging her three kids to the area’s incredible monuments, museums, or zoo,
she’s probably skipping off to her pilates class, pounding the pavement
in her ‘hood, or daydreaming about getting flames painted onto the side
of her mini-van.

.

A Michigan native, Claire Jess moved to Northern Virginia
after college to work at a feminist non-profit and returned in 2000
after getting master’s degrees in English and women’s studies. Having
studied critical pedagogy, she tried to apply theory to practice while
teaching high school English in Northern Virginia. Five years and too
many pregnant students later, Claire was about to throw in the towel
when she happily found herself in the family way and left the classroom
in spring 2006 when her son, E, was born. In the evenings, she tutors
kids whose parents have too much money and does copyediting work (when
she takes the time to look for it).

Claire hopes to
return to a social justice field at some point but for now is focused
on being a happy, natural-minded/green and yet decidedly suburban mama,
sometimes-conflicting identities she explores in her blog Crunchy-Chewy Mama. She also blogs about her evolving relationship to mothering (a boy!) at Mama’s Mouth. Her blog Inexact Science: Raising Healthy Families
is her public way-TMI: either a soapbox proselytizing about alternative
medicine and nutrition or an enlightening account of Claire’s holistic
health journey, depending on which side of Whole Foods you stand on.

Born and raised in Connecticut, Dawn went off to school in western New
York, only to be lured to Prince George's County, Maryland, after graduation by her
then-fiance who had transferred to UMD. Twelve years later, Dawn,
now-hubby and three whackjob kids still call PG County their home,
appreciating the small town environment in their immediate community
and the short metro ride to DC. (And yes, we DO call it PG!) When she
was still a respectable income-earner, Dawn spent her days with
preschoolers as a lab school teacher, but when her child care costs
outweighed her income level, she made the jump to SAHM-dom. Most days
are a mixture of preschool-at-home, 1950's housewifely duties, and pure
craziness.

Dawn lives a vicarious life online, blogging for a small, yet for some reason loyal, audience at my thoughts exactly,
where she blathers on about nothing much, but with a ridiculously high
word count. When she's not blogging or tackling screaming children,
she's got her nose buried in a book, even if it means faking a
stomachache to read in the bathroom in peace for 15 minutes. (Ahem.) She is
thrilled to share her love of books as a staff reviewer on the
collaborative book review blog, 5 Minutes for Books.
Joining the DC Metro Moms is like going to a party where everyone else
is infinitely cooler than you, but you're glad just to be invited.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Diana Funk was not raised by wolves,
though you are forgiven for making that assumption. When she's not
eating her young, she's busy keeping them alive
raising them in Northern Virginia. By "them," she means "her," since
she only has one child at the moment (an exuberant 23-month- old
daughter), but she’s hoping to be knocked up in a
family way again soon. In fact, this whole parenting thing is still a
bit of an unexpected thrill for her, since Madeleine (aka Lulu) was a
test tube baby and Diana wasn't ever sure she would actually get
pregnant (infertility journey – thrills! excitement! hormones! –
chronicled here). Diana was born in Brooklyn, NY, but grew up in New Orleans, y’all, and northwestern New Jersey, you guys. She
headed for the Mid-Atlantic to attend University of Maryland at College
Park, where she earned both a BA degree (English) and an MRS degree
(she met her husband as an undergrad). She and
Joe have been married almost 12 years, but were married twice: ever the
romantics, they eloped on their lunch hour to secure dental insurance
for Joe. 16 months and a root canal later, they had a more formal affair.

A former
human resources manager, Diana traded the pleasures of disciplining
employees for disciplining her toddler full-time, and has come to
realize that people tend to make the same discipline-worthy mistakes at
age 2 that they make at age 25. When she’s not chasing her kid around, Diana tries to manage the pet sitting business she’s owned for six years, her blog about life with Lulu, and all manner of daily chaos that surrounds her.

xxxxx

Devra currently resides in Northern Virginia and is an author of the under-the-radar-cult-hit book "Mommy Guilt: Learn To Worry Less, Focus on What Matters Most and Raise Happier Kids" and Spanish edition "Mama Culpable." Devra and her family moved to The DC 3 years ago from the South of Illinois. Prior to that, she lived in Kansas, Louisiana, California, Arizona, Connecticut, and New York. It would be easy to assume Devra is a Suburban Bedouin, however Devra roams the country due to her husband's job working for the Military Industrial Complex. (AKA the United States Air Force). Devra is the mother of Son One and Son Two. Son One is a 6th grade Tween and Son Two is a second grader who seriously wishes he were older than Son One.

When Devra's OB announced, "Congratulations, it's a Non-Immunity to Rubella!" Devra put her clinical social work career in the freezer. When she was able to get a booster shot, alongside her first son, she put her career on defrost and returned to helping families once again. Devra has worn many professional hats from School Social Worker to Director of Volunteer Services for a hospice. Devra is co-founder of Parentopia, LLC along with certified parent education and child development specialist Aviva Pflock. Devra and Aviva travel the country speaking at conferences and fundraisers as well as conducting workshops and seminars for audiences of all kinds. Aviva and Devra have a mission to absolve guilt...One mom(or dad!) at a time! Parenthood may not always be fun, but it should at least be enjoyable!

Devra's commentary appears in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Arizona Republic, Parents Magazine, Woman's World Magazine, BabyTalk, American Baby, Fit Pregnancy, Cookie Magazine, The Globe and Mail and many others. Devra has been a guest on NBC, Fox and CBS television stations. In all her spare time, Devra can often be found at Wegmans wandering the aisles looking for Sarah and blogging with Aviva over at Parentopia.

Dumb Mom is the mom
behind the popular humor and parenting blog parenting BY dummies.
Outsmarted by her children daily as she attempts to navigate motherhood,
childhood, and everything in between she enjoys sharing her stories of
failure and success with you in a humorous, heartfelt, and honest way.
She may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but she is definitely the
best dressed (an advantage completely lost by being inside of a shed) as
she prides herself on being a handbag role model for the masses. Dumb
Mom is not your everyday mom blogger. She doesn't craft (not well
anyway). She doesn't share many healthful dinner alternatives (because
she likes bacon, and bacon flavored products). And, child centered
activities are not her forte (although she has come up with some
interesting child centered activities designed to keep kids busy while
she partakes in adult centered activities). But, she loves her Dudes
like nobody's business and is making a real go of being a good, okay, a
decent mom, despite not being able to match wits with a toddler.

Amanda Rodriguez, the mom behind the dummy, is a former middle school
language arts and social studies teacher, turned stay-at-home-mom,
turned graduate student, turned professional photographer, freelance
writer, problogger and general director of awesomeness. She reluctantly
resides in Maryland with her husband and three small Dudes where she
laments leaving the California sunshine on a daily basis.

In 1997, Elaine — a native Kansan— clicked her ruby slippers together three times, but rather than heading back home, she landed in DC where she put her public policy degree to work. She didn't know at the time she'd eventually own a home in the suburbs, be married to a government employee, and have two incredible children. But then, she’s heard that from a lot of moms at the playgrounds around Arlington. Besides reveling in the chance to see the world through the eyes of her children, she also maintains a part-time job at a very family-friendly nonprofit.

Her mom, still back in Kansas, off-handedly commented one day about
how nice her neighbor’s granddaughter’s blog was for purposes of keeping
in touch, and thus her own blog came to
life. That— and it was a hobby she could maintain in those precious few
hours between her children’s bedtime and hers. Prior to being a mom, she
was an avid potter and chocolate maker. She hopes to return to both of
these hobbies once her children age a bit.

A mom, a teacher, a
wife, a runner, and a cancer survivor,
Elena S. been in the Washington DC area
since 1992 when she started her undergraduate degree at the George
Washington
University.Her studies of
international affairs and Russian studies may not be applicable to her
role as
an Advanced Academic Resource Teacher in the Virginia suburbs, but the
time at
GW did bind Elena to the DC metro area for all that it has to offer.Being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s
lymphoma at 23 made Elena a fighter, and provided a perspective that was
life
altering.Life was no longer about
watching, it was about doing.And
so, after running (jogging really) two Marine Corps Marathons, Elena
became a
mom to a spirited and independent daughter (Principessa) who always
keeps
things “interesting.”

Elena spent the better part of two years writing
about her
profession to achieve National Board of Professional Teaching Standards
(NBPTS)
certification.Throughout that
time, it became clear that she needed to share her personal story as
well.Elena began writing A Day in the Life
in September
2009 to reflect on what it really means to be a cancer survivor, have a
child,
go through a divorce, fight the running/non running roller coaster, and
find
herself in love and getting remarried.Writing about the journey, or the chaos depending on the day,
morphed
into a constant look out for the funny, sarcastic, sometimes even sad
moments
that each day brings.

Elena became a publishing mom for Fairfax Macaroni Kid in
March of
2010, where in addition to writing about the joys of day to day life on A Day in
the Life, she
adds her spin on activities, resources, and ideas for local parents.When not teaching, parenting, writing,
running, or attending Zumba classes, Elena tries to keep things brief on
twitter as caramma
or MacKidFairfaxVA.

Evonne grew up in
Connecticut just outside of "The City" but has called Arlington, Va.,
home since 1998. Although the traffic here makes her bonkers, she can't
imagine living anywhere else -- international cuisine; free, world-class
museums; miles of bike trails; and a morning commute past the Memorials
can't be beat.

By day, she's a web project manager for a
non-partisan health policy foundation, but her true love is writing and
expects to get her masters in creative nonfiction from Johns Hopkins in
the Fall of 2010.

When she's not hanging out with her husband and
her little girl (2 1/2), she likes nothing better than to settle down
on the couch with a glass of red wine or coffee (depending on the time
of day) and read the Sunday New York Times or Lucky
magazine (depending on how intellectual she's feeling). Yoga is her
sport of choice. She's an unequivocal INFP (Introverted, Intuitive,
Feeling, Perceptive; "Still Waters Run Deep").

Evonne writes about
navigating the fine line between self, mother, and wife at Arlington Mama
and tweets from @jumpinjavagrrl.

.

xxxxx

Gayleis a native Washingtonian who grew up, and still lives, within DC limits, a fact she will proudly tell anyone who will listen. She took a detour through Providence, Manhattan, Boston and San Francisco in her 20s, but is happy to be back in the nation's capital. She has twin 3 year-old daughters who keep her busy and tired but always entertained. Passions include reality TV (though that one is thankfully waning), Bottle Caps candy, the NYT crossword on the rare days she can get to it, The Police, her dog, and reading. She blogs about modern fiction at Every Day I Write The Book. Gayle spent 6 long years practicing law but has since left for greener pastures. These days, she works at a strategic communications company where she specializes in social media outreach, which means she gets to talk to a lot of bloggers. She's not particularly interested in politics, so don't ask her who's going to get the nomination.

Janelle Marshall is
now officially a WestMidEast Coaster. She’s had the privilege of living
on the West Coast, Midwest and now the East Coast. As a recent
transplant from Chicago, she and her family are now living in Richmond,
VA. After living in Chicago for almost ten years, Janelle and her
husband left the bustling city life of Chicago to be closer to family
and get more support raising their 2 ½ year old daughter.Being
a mom is one of the greatest joys of her life and blogging has become a
way to make sense of motherhood. She also loves to write and has a
master’s degree in journalism. When she’s not writing she’s teaching
undergraduate online classes.

Now that life is a little more
laidback, she’s investing her time in family and hoping to add to her
brood soon. With a background in nonprofit program management, she
misses working full-time, but is blown away that she gets to work from
home and raise her daughter.There are some major
differences between Chicago and Richmond (people are SO polite), but
she’s done this before and she’s excited to see what Virginia has to
offer. You can also find her blogging on her personal site
Mama Daisy.

xxxxx

Jean, a.k.a. Stimey moved to Maryland in the fall of 2003. Prepared
to hate DC life, she was pleasantly surprised to find her home and
community here. She is now firmly ensconced in the DC-area mom life.
She is the mom of Sam, born in 2001; Jack, born in 2003; and Quinn,
born in 2005. All three of her kids were born in different states: Sam
in California, Jack in Alaska, and Quinn in Maryland. Jean will be
forced to live in Maryland for the rest of her child-bearing years so
she doesn't have to have any more kids.

Jean spends most of her time playing with her kids and her friends,
writing, working part-time from home, and starting a videography
business. Jean's main blog is Stimeyland, where she writes about all of the above, including parenting an autistic child. In addition to Stimeyland, Jean writes about decluttering at The Junk Pyramid and reviews products at Things and Stuff Reviews.

Once upon a time, Jenni was living
the not-so-glamorous life of a non-profit fundraiser in D.C. Upon
graduating from the University of Maryland in College Park with degrees
in both Women's Studies and Journalism, she decided she could never be a
"real" journalist and "work for the man," so a career saving the world
one dollar at a time seemed just the thing. After several years of
bouncing around women's organizations and direct service providers in
the District working way to hard for way to little compensation she
finally took a "big job," got married to her high school sweetheart, and
bought a house in the suburbs.

Jenni's next completely unoriginal move was to get
pregnant and have her fist baby, Oscar, in July 2007. She opted to stay
on maternity leave indefinitely (take that, Women's Studies!),
beginning her career as a stay-at-home mom. Her second son, Miles
William, was born exactly 18 months and two days after Oscar's birth.
Jenni enjoys good beer, mediocre wine, books of all kinds, and
excellent conversation. She also maintains that she is funnier in
person and has never lost an argument. She blogs about
barely containing the chaos that is raising two boys so close in age at Oscarelli, where you will often find her
complaining about her lack of sleep, unsuccessful potty training, and
her husband's inability to put his socks in the hamper. Which is
exactly THREE FEET AWAY from the spot he dropped them on the floor.

.xx

Jessica
is a California native that came to DC in 1998 as a straight-laced
Senate staffer by day, Adams Morgan bar crawler by night. She
transitioned to
life as a public relations executive and newlywed Home Depot frequenter
at the turn of the century. Her current and favorite persona is that
of the minivan
driving, bass-booming housewife and mom to a five year old son and
three
year old daughter.

Jessica writes A Parent in Silver Spring,
a blog that makes the rich resources available for parents and kids in
the DC area more apparent, served with a side of humor. She is a freelance writer, featured in The Washington Post Weekend, as well as a freelance communications & social media consultant.

Jessica is surprised everyday by how much she rejoices in being
a mother, how crazy being a mom is making her and how she can fluctuate
between the two feelings in the span of a second. She loves snuggling
with her kids, her hot IT husband, hanging out with any of her four
siblings, 12 siblings-in-law and 18 nieces and nephews, American
literature, Smithsonian institutions, early morning runs, late night schemes, overpriced jeans, Real Simple, California bands and Outer Banks vacations. Much to Jodifur's dismay and her neighbors' delight, she always has a box of wine on tap in her kitchen.

Jill Berry is a
writer/blogger/twitterer/Facebooker/social networker by day and a
chauffeur by night. She works up to the second before her children get
off their respective school buses. The quiet of her dining room is
shattered by the clatter of shoes, the clunk of backpacks, and the
wailing of children who are tired and cranky from the school day. The
calm of her writing day becomes the eye of the storm as she drives from
one activity to the next. She is a keen planner who has figured out how
to get three children to two different activities with only the bare
minimum of tantrums. Jill may not always be on time, but by golly she
gets her children to their myriad of activities: volleyball, karate,
swimming, clarinet, lacrosse, and religious education classes.

Jill is coming off a stress-free SAHM stint with her youngest, now a
1st
grader. The reality of future college tuition has drawn her back to the
workforce. Prior to her SAHM-ness she was a senior production editor in
charge of books, manuals, and journals for a health care publisher.

As a mom of preteens and teens, Jill is all too aware of the dangers
lurking on the internet. She is proud to say that she is a Test Drive
Mom for Yoursphere:
an online site for preteens and teens that puts safety first.

J.J.aka JavaMom is a native of Miami, FL, but moved to Northern VA in 2002 from Silicon Valley – with pit stops in Missouri and Georgia in between. In her first career, as a television reporter and anchor, she especially loved crime stories, even eliciting a murder confession on camera. A move to California accidentally led to a career in Marketing Communications for high tech companies – which may or may not be much different from chasing down criminals, depending on your perspective! She is also the editor of the third and fourth editions of the book, Find It Onlineby Alan Schlein.

No longer chasing criminals or Silicon Valley execs, J.J. now chases two small children, JavaGirl and JavaBoy during the day, and dashes off to meetings for the Junior League of Northern Virginia at night. She couldn’t accomplish any of it without the help of her saintly spouse, JavaDad. To keep her sanity J.J. blogs about life, family, technology and anything else that amuses her atCaffeine and a Prayer.

xxxxx

Joannehas always been crazy about Washington, D.C., but finally got to move to the area in 1988. After spending a decade in the "glamorous" world of broadcast news, Joanne gave law school a spin, practicing law at firms and a government agency in D.C. It finally became apparent to Joanne that writing (not the legal kind!) was her real passion, so to ring in the new century she bagged her law practice and took up freelance writing full time.

Joanne has a eight-year-old daughter who she and her husband adopted from China. She is also stepmom to two adult daughters. When she's not writing, blogging or mainlining Project Runway reruns, she's thinking about how she can get more stamps in her passport and how to convince her husband that it's time to drink those bottles of Ornellaia and Solaia he's been saving.Joanne lives with her daughter and husband in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., just close enough to be able to almost-honestly say she lives in Washington!

Joanne's freelance work has appeared in many national and regional publications, including The Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, The Washington Examiner, as well as on The Huffington Post, MSN and Marketplace Radio. She's trying to compete with Sarah to see how many blogs she can write for. Joanne blogs and exercises her punditry muscles as PunditMom, her personal/political blog, as well as blogging at MomsRising, MOMocrats and is a Contributing Editor for Politics & News at BlogHer.

.Jodi
is one of the few native Washingtonians actually living in Washington.
Besides a short stint in Connecticut for college, she has lived in the
DC area her whole life. She remembers the old "Giant" grocery store,
and knows why DCers rush to the grocery store to buy bread, milk,
toilet paper, and bottled water when they sense that first flake of
snow.

Jodi grew up in Montgomery County, Md, and went to law
school in Downtown D.C. Jodi now lives in Montgomery County and works
part-time as an attorney in child abuse. She lives with her husband,
Doug, her preschool son, Michael, as well as a dog, Foster, who has
many, many issues. She started Jodifurbecause
her husband kept telling her she reads so many blogs so might as well
write one. She also puts her expensive legal education to good use as
the celebrity legal corespondent on mamapop.com, a pop culture blog.

Karen G. is a native Clevelander who has called the D.C. area home since
sometime in the Reagan administration. She is a journalist married to a
journalist - she met her husband on press row covering a basketball
game. That was 17 years, several beat changes (from sports reporter to
parenting writer to feature writer), two houses and one kid ago. She
practiced juggling a busy career at The Washington Times while being a
work-at-home mom, PTA president and super swim team volunteer.

These
days, Karen freelances, ghost writes, blogs and parents a teenager in
Reston, where she would run for mayor if the town had such a thing. She
is exploring the social media universe and no longer is insulted that
her body of work may be relegated to 140 characters at a time. In fact,
it is helping her write more concisely.

Kate grew up in Washington, DC, and clings to the idea that deep
down she is still a "city person." But after several moves further and
further into Northern Virginia, she is starting to admit that life in
the burbs has its perks. There is something to be said for unlimited
parking wherever you go and the lack of people asking you for money
when you walk out your front door. This financially driven trajectory
out of her hometown has included Arlington, McLean and now Reston. She
expects to be in Leesburg by the end of 2012.

Kate's family includes a son diagnosed with PDD-NOS (Autism
spectrum) and boy/girl twins. All were born within 18 months. And no -
none of it was planned. Her husband would like to get a dog to step up
the level of chaos, but Kate would rather wait until everyone is potty
trained and she's finished picking up human poop. Because of her oldest
son's delays, she is putting her career on hold for a while to take a
more active role in his early intervention. She will also be using this
time to focus on her writing and figure out what she wants to be when
she grows up...That is, if she does in fact survive the Summer.

.

Kimberly Petro is a DC area native growing up in and around the
beltway until the age of 18 when she moved to New York City to attend
The American Musical and Dramatic Academy.
After graduation, Kimberly was accepted to the National Conservatory of
Dramatic Arts in DC but instead of further schooling she opted to run
off to Vegas and elope. She's a little crazy like that.

Her husband's career as a corporate executive allowed/forced Kimberly
and her
growing family to live around the country from Oklahoma to Georgia to
the SF Bay Area giving birth to two beautiful girls along the way.
Kimberly finally returned to her DC area roots when the family moved to
Virginia in 2004. Shortly after, she found her passion for expression
and forum for sarcasm by way of blogging and later, freelance writing.

When she’s not typing away on her laptop, Kimberly enjoys being a Jazzercise instructor, loves to garden, throw parties and is currently trying to survive raising a teen and a tween
daughter while keeping a smile on everyone’s face.

Kimberly resides in Fauquier County, VA, a.k.a. “The Ding Dang Woods”, with her 2
daughters, 2 dogs, and 2 cats but only 1 husband. You can also find her on her
personal blog Petroville
and on Twitter @Kimberle.

Kiran Ferrandino, aka Masala Chica ended up in Northern Virginia after fleeing New Jersey in the mid-90's to pursue her college education. While at the University of Virgina, she learned a lot about the world and despite never believing it possible, ended up settling down south of the Mason Dixon line. Kiran works for a Software Company in the ever exciting and demanding world of Project Management. (hey guys, guys! come back! we're not done yet. Thanks).

Raised in an Indian household herself (hence the Masala), Kiran found her happily ever after with her husband, John, who is half Italian and half Puerto Rican (and that's where the Chica comes from). She lovingly calls her two children her quarter-riquenas.

She will admittedly tell you that she drinks too much wine, loves going to Costco just a tad too much and has settled into her suburban life just a wee bit more comfortably than she expected when living her fabulous single life in Arlington in her 20's. She loves running, playing guitar, Bikram yoga, arguing with her husband, and writing. Her claim to fame (ok not fame, but it was cool) was that she used to be the lead singer for a DC cover band. While not yet a Soccer Mom, she has been a "Soccer Wife" for years now and is ready to accept the inevitable once her kiddies can kick a ball.

.

.

Leticia (aka Tech Savvy Mama)
never had any inkling that she would end up in the DC Metro Area. She
now finds herself loving everything about living here except Beltway
traffic. Born and raised in Northern California's Silicon Valley, this
Bay Area native spent 6 years as a New Englander and then moved to the
DC Metro Area to be closer to her now-husband and teach for a local
school system. Leticia is now the mom of two children and a technology
magnet coordinator in a local school system.

Leticia started her own blog, Tech Savvy Mama,
where she uses her background in early childhood education and
classroom technology integration to guide parents in selecting quality
technology products for their children. She is also the City Editor for
Being Savvy Washington DC, where she writes about fun activities for kids ages 2-6 with an educational twist.

Lindsay moved to
the DC area six months ago from the City of Brotherly Love (kicking and
screaming) with her husband, 2 kids and their dog, Camille. She spends
the majority of her time chasing after her two boys, who are 2 1/2 years
and 10 months old. She began her blog Be Nice to Mama soon
after she moved from her wonderful community in Philadelphia to the DC
Metro area. Writing was cathartic and was a way for her to begin
recreating her social support network and to reach out to other parents.
Now she uses Be Nice To Mama to bring humor and reflection into her
daily life of raising two energetic little ones. When she leaves her
"mama hat" at home, she works as a Registered Nurse providing home
visits to premature babies, and is completing a Nurse Midwifery Program
at the University of Pennsylvania. Very soon she will be delivering
babies and will be whispering, "Be Nice to Mama" to each of them.

Michelle, aka Wife and Mommy, moved to the DC area when she was
two. Other than living a few hours away for four years of college and
spending a year in Asia, she's lived in the NoVA area for 29 years.
She and the love of her life, The
Husband, have been married for seven years. They met and married at
the same church they
still attend today. They have three young children: Bito was born in
2003,
Cupcake in 2005, and BabyMuffin in 2007. J-dog, the family lab, rounds
out their family and home, although the kids have some crazy notion
that they are getting a cat sometime soon. Life is never boring in
their cozy, comfortable house!

Before becoming a mom, Michelle was an educator, teaching middle school science. Now she
works from home part time when she's not keeping house, shuttling
the kids to their activities and participating in activities at her
church. Being a stay home mom has been her most fulfilling career and
she's glad to keep notes of it in her blog, Wife and Mommy.

Michelle is a fan of the Orioles, the Redskins and anyone who is
playing the Yankees. She loves a thick juicy steak, a draft beer, a
bowl of
ice-cream and a good book, but not necessarily all at the same time.
Her lifelong goals include getting back to her pre-pregnancy body and
finding memory some day.

..

Nicole Crowley is a Washington native. She moved away to produce and report TV news. But DC kept calling to her, so she moved back to be a national radio producer. The first week she was back at work in DC, her girlfriends convinced her to go down to Dewey Beach with them for Labor Day Weekend. She reluctantly went, and met her husband. Turned out he was a DC native too and they remembered each other from high school.

Since they got ‘hitched’, Nicole has worked at Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill and been a freelance writer for the past several years. The freelancing flexibility has been nice while she’s been busy with her greatest accomplishment to date: her young, now-elementary-age son. She considers being a mom a privilege and a source of joy… although there have been some moments amidst throwing-up or potty-training when she has said, “How does everybody else do this so well?” With that said,

Nicole likes to concentrate on the good stuff, that’s the rule of her blog, BananaBlueberry.

Rebekah is a
working mother with an over-developed sense of
irreverence and a stubborn affection for the non-profit sector where she
has
made her career.She blames her parents
who told her to go forth and do good in the world instead of telling her
to be
a glamorous socialite with scads of money and expensive shoes.

Rebekah grew up in
Rochester, NY where Wegman's forever spoiled her for other grocery
stores. She arrived in the DC area in 1996, left in 2000, and returned
in 2003, which by her math, means she's lived in either Northern VA, DC,
or Montgomery County for 11 years and has spent far too much time in
the different DMVs changing her automobile registration to stay current.

She and her husband
recently gave up their tiny, little,
rented love nest on Capitol Hill in favor of buying cute house with a
yard (a real
yard!) and a playroom (a real playroom!) and a guest room (a real guest
room!)
but without a dishwasher in Montgomery County. Their marriage remains
strong
despite sharing dishwashing duty.Together, they are attempting to keep pace with their adorable,
brilliant, funny, and extremely energetic two-year old son.

When not
working, parenting or blogging, Rebekah wanders
around the music section in Target wondering who the people on the CD
cases are
and why they’re all so young.She blogs
about her life at Mom-In-A-Million.

Robin (also known as noteverstill) has four- and
two-year-old
daughters, an infant son, a lovely husband who works many more than
full-time hours and a full-time career of her own in government in the
suburbs of Washington, DC. She takes her three little loves with her to
work where they spend their days in a childcare program tucked gently
into the building where she spends her quietest eight hours. Robin
loves this arrangement because she loves both her career and that she
is always available to her children as needed for breastfeeding or
boo-boo kissing or story time or extra-special lunch dates
in the cafeteria. At the end of each day she packs up her work and
packs up her children and they commute together back home and back to
Daddy. She believes in wishing on first stars and
dandelion
puffs; that the glass really is half full; and that imagination can
never be too nurtured. She has a station wagon filled with test
subjects to prove it. Let’s just not discuss that in her world
the half-full glass is often really a juice box, and that occasionally
it gets squirted all over the rear-view mirror (and the back of her
head). You can always read more about Robin’s parenting philosophies
and her family’s antics and adventures at her personal blog, The Not-Ever-Still Life,
or on Twitter @noteverstill.

Sandie is a recent New York transplant to the DC 'burbs. She misses three of the five boroughs terribly (two not so much), and the thin-crust slabs of pizza and fresh bagels with lox sold on every street corner in New York City but nowhere else. But she loves her house (a yard! a white picket fence! for way under $2 million!) and the terrific public school system, and relishes still being a Metro-ride away from some of the best museums in the world.

After more than eight years as a full-time journalist, Sandie's now at home, where she juggles multiple freelance deadlines, a six-year-old son, and three-year-old daughter (and hardly ever drops any of them). She also blogs about motherhood, marriage, and movies at Urban Mama. Whenever she's not chasing after or chauffering her preschooler and kindergartener around Montgomery County, Sandie writes movie and DVD reviews for Common Sense Media and entertainment feature articles for Daily Variety..

Sarahlives in Northern Virginia with her husband and three year old boy/girl twins. She moved to the D.C. area after spending most of her life in Florida (Tampa, Orlando, and Ft. Lauderdale).

She was a stay at home mom until she realized that people would actually pay her to write. You can find her writing at Sarah and the Good Squad, BlogHer, Draft Day Suitand about 40 other blogs.In her spare time Sarah is a raging fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Bravo reality television and good food. Her hobbies include singing, drinking beer, potty training, blogging, writing bios about her self in third person and stealing jokes like the one about writing about her self in third person from Jason at Pet Cobra.

Stacy Kravitz is an almost-native Washingtonian having lived in the
DC-area since she was ten-years old. She grew up in rural
horse-country Virginia, attended college in DC and settled as a
singleton in the Maryland suburbs. Before meeting her darling
sports-enthused husband she drifted along a career-less job path of
nannying, librarian-work and the uber-unfulfilling executive
assistantship. Stacy landed her dream job in December 2007 when her
son was born. She now spends her days changing diapers, blowing
raspberries on a cute bloated-poochy baby
toddler belly and chasing after her little home-wrecker of a kid as he
empties shelves and drawers at lightening speed. When the kid naps,
she writes. Ergo, that
explains the ebbs and flows of her productivity.

In her "spare" time
she often takes on home-owner projects like painting the kitchen and
power-washing the deck. It has been said that she makes a great
husband because she is the home repair person. When the gardening dirt
and car grease have been scrubbed off her hands she can cook a mean and
hearty meal usually opting for something grilled and something veggie,
and peanut butter cream pie, of course.

Her friends
not-so-jokingly say that she lives in a zoo but four cats, a dog, a
husband and a baby are not enough to knock her down. Stacy has been
blogging about it since 2005 as The Fabulous Miss. S.

.

Stephanie, aka Lawyer Mama,
ditched the full time lawyer gig in the Summer of 2008 to concentrate
on turning Virginia into a Blue state. Along the way, she started two
businesses: a legal services and writing group and a portrait
photography business, LightHearted Photography. Stephanie is the New Media and Outreach Director for Blue Star Families,
a non-profit group acting as a bridge between military family members,
politicians and the civilian world. She is also the editor of Being Savvy Virginia Beach.

Steph and her computer
geek husband T. moved from DC to Chesapeake, Virginia in the Summer of
2005 in
an attempt to get away from D.C. traffic and closer to the beach. Steph
and T have two little boys born only 15 months apart in 2004 and 2006.
Hollis and Holden are known collectively as H&H. And yes, they
really are just as much
trouble as twins. No matter how hectic life gets, Steph always wears
cute shoes. And then she blogs about them.

When she's not running around trying to remember her own name, Steph spends her time swimming, taking photographs,
and reading. Oh, wait...that was before Steph had kids. Now she and
her husband of 14 years just try to catch a few hours of sleep and
maybe sneak in a date or two. She writes about her life, love,
frustrations and joys at Lawyer Mama and her photography at LightHearted Photography: The Blog. Stephanie can also be found ranting about politics at MOMocrats, a collaborative site written by progressive mothers who are so damn smart, they intimidate Stephanie at times.

Stephanie
Stearns Dulli a.k.a. Minky, is an L.A. girl recently transplanted to the
D.C. area, having followed Prince Charming to the District by way of
Akron. Yes, Akron. She loves D.C. but is still trying to grasp the
concept of winter footwear and layering clothes. So far, not so good.
She is, however, grateful that no matter whether she is shielding her
eyes from sun or snow, her big sunglasses are still at the ready. She is
obsessed with her son Max, great handbags, and fighting time as it
tries to march across her face. A real live professional actor,
Stephanie made her living doing commercials, soaps, and theatre in Los
Angeles and is slowly working her way into the D.C. scene. That is if
she doesn't keep getting distracted by snuggling her baby and munching
on his toes. He's delicious.

A social creature, Stephanie
started blogging because living in a new town and being a stay at home
mom left her with no one to joke around with...and well, the snarky had
to go somewhere! She leapt into blogging knowing nothing about it, and
was (thankfully!) welcomed with open arms into the blogosphere despite
her rampant abuse of ellipses and exclamation marks. A requisite
Starbucks and gym addict, her special skills include sleeping while
wearing a tiara, being a pied piper of stray cats, and knowing all the
choreography to The Freshbeats and The Wiggles. No, she's not available
for private shows. When not blogging at DC Metro Moms, Stephanie can be
found plastering the internet with pictures of her cute kid at
www.dialmforminky.com

Sueis a native of the DC area. She went to college in
Ohio, but came back after graduating, followed by the boy who would
become her husband. She lives inside the Beltway, just down the road
from the University of Maryland, and can’t picture ever living outside
the bounds of 495.

In her former life, she was Metro-riding law librarian. Currently,
she is a minivan driving, stay-at-home mom to four kids, two boys and
two girls, who keep her on the road, on her toes and, more often than
she would like, in the laundry room. In her free time, Sue enjoys
watching the Discovery Health Channel, drinking margaritas and thinking
up ways to stay in shape without actually exercising. She blogs about
life and parenthood at My Party of 6 and is a contributor on MomSpark.

Susan McCorkindale was born and raised in New Jersey. She loves
Bruce Springsteen, the Jersey Shore, and the New York Giants. A
graduate of Marymount Manhattan College, Susan spent five long, hard
minutes pursuing an acting career before making a detour into
marketing. She has held top spots at Family Circle and Popular Science
magazines, and since 2005 has written advertising copy on a freelance
basis from the comfort of her 500-acre beef cattle farm in Northern
Virginia. Susan is also the author of Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl,
her laugh out loud true tale of her move from the suburbs to the
sticks, and how she learned the hard way that Manolos and manure just
don't mix.

The mother of two sons and wife of one very patient and
understanding apprentice farmer, Susan spends her free time blogging
about life on the funny farm,
teaching P.E. and running the PTO at her son's elementary school, and
reading everything Laurie Notaro, Jen Lancaster, Dave Barry, and Nora
Ephron have ever written.

.

Suziestill
calls herself a recent transplant to the DC Area, although she arrived
in March of 2006. A native Texan, she, her hubby, their three boys, and
two cats left the great State of Texas and headed to Virginia for an
adventure (actually her hubby's new job). In October of 2008 they were
joined by a little girl (and finally a bit of hormonal balance in the
family!)

While she has a Master's in Public Affairs from the University of
Texas - LBJ School of Public Affairs (Hook'Em Horns!), Suzie considers
herself retired and she now stays home and wrangles the aforementioned
kids. In her spare time she is active with the PTA, the local MOMS
Club, teaches scrapbooking classes, watches as much college football as
humanly possible, and attempts to avoid anything and everything related
to cooking. Her blog, Confessions of a Not So Well Behaved Woman chronicles her adventures in parenting, life in the DC area, and life with a house full of kids.

house full of kids.

When Thien-Kimisn’t chasing her active preschooler, she has
a blast working as a Passion Parties consultant, giving women tips and tools to take
charge of their pleasure. She met her husband during college in good ole Louisiana,
where she was born and raised.

She came to DC by way of Syracuse, NY, where she honed her
burgeoning skills as a costume designer and stitcher. Now a WAHM, she squeezes
in creative moments from sewing and crafts to playing Iron Chef with her
pantry. She also encourages art and
creativity with her daughter, while attempting to blog about it at PassionandArt.

Sarah (TravelMommy) recently moved back
to the DC area from a short stint raising camels in the Middle East.
She is constantly searching for that perfect falafel in Northern
Virginia with her husband and special-needs 1-year old (affectionately
called Potato). A former Director of Marketing for a mid-size opera
company, she has since sold herself into a life of government service,
where she works by day as a secretary and moonlights as an amateur
musician and writer.

Sarah is a contributing writer at Glee
Club Online, a fansite for the world's most awesome TV show. You can
also find her talking about trials and tribulations of life with a
medically fragile child at her own blog, Traveling Marshalls. Follow her on Twitter @TravelMommy.

Victoria a native Rhode Islander, came to the DC Metro area in 1996 as a college transfer. After a childhood of family vacations in the Capitol, dreams of becoming First Lady, and numerous ribbings of being a female Alex P. Keaton it seemed only natural to finally move there. After transferring to the University of Maryland, College Park, this true Yankee found her home and graduated with a degree in History. Many government, consulting and PR jobs, including a move to So Cal later, she is glad to be back in her element and the land of all things political and conspiracy filled. Hidden bunkers, lurking figures, dark shadows? SheÃ¢ÂÂs on it! Victoria is now happily free of corporate America and a WAHM and freelance writer as well as the creator of the blog, The Mummy Chronicles, Mummy's Product Reviews and a co-founder of Flaming Tulle, a wedding blog. Her experience and writing skills can be seen on such sites as Parent Bloggers Network, She Speaks and The Hot Mom's Club, just to name a few.

When Vicky isn't writing she can be found running after her toddler T.D. (that stands for Tiny Dictator), baking herself into a Bree Van de Kamp frenzy, flipping houses with her incredibly sane former Marine husband H, or simply resisting the urge to smoke. That alone can take up a whole day. A self-proclaimed product junkie, a sometimes reformed shopaholic, and lover of British Chick-lit and Victorian feminist writing, Vicky hopes to one day put all this great knowledge to use and write her own novel. She'ÂÂs also a rabid Terps fan and lover of all things French country. She currently resides in the Northern Virginia suburbs and dreams of moving further into her favourite city in the world, Washington, DC.

By far, her biggest challenge and greatest joy is motherhood. Jill
and her husband are the proud parents of two elementary school aged
daughters. Jill admits that she is NOT A PERFECT PARENT and fears her
daughter's teenage years. Her girls can be heard running around the
house screaming, "Mommy is blogging again!" and she needs to bribe from
time to time them with treats. Is she allowed to admit that?
On the bright side, Jill really digs living in Silicon Valley and
tries her best to blend in, praying that no one will hear her "New
Jersey accent". Unless, of course, she is royally upset.

Jill handles PR, Marketing, Business Development and outreach for this collaborative community.

PARTNER - SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP & CHIEF TECHNOLOGY MOM:Beth Blecherman (Beth B at svmoms.) Beth Blechermanis a techie turned blogger mom who is in charge of blogging technology and development for the Silicon Valley Moms Group
network. She also works on the outreach/development to obtain new
bloggers and organizing events for the network. Beth started her
career in application development, then system auditing and her last
role was Senior Manager, Computer Process Integrity, for Deloitte. Beth's personal blog is on tips, tricks, and discussions about parents use of technology for their families (Techmamas). When not blogging, she can be found on Twitter, Facebook and tooling around other new online social networking sites...

PARTNER, SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP:Tekla S. Nee,
a cofounder of the Silicon Valley Moms Group, serves as editor-in-chief
and CFO for the network of blogs. She has been writing about parenting
for more than 25 years for magazines like Parenting,BabyTalk,Working Woman, Special Reports: Family, and Better Health and Living. She blogged for five years before there was such a word, writing a weekly column about about her life with three kids for the Palo Alto Daily News. She's published three books, The Mommy Rescue Guide First Year; The Mommy Zone: Tales from the Trenches of Parenthood; and The Everything Baby's First Year Book (also published in Russian and Chinese).
And that's just in her spare time, during the day, she masquerades as a
mild-mannered technology journalist working for a major metropolitan
magazine.

PARTNER - SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP: Linsey Krolik joined
the management team of Silicon Valley Moms Group as a Partner in
October 2009, after serving as the company's lawyer, book club editor,
and a contributing writer for Silicon Valley Moms Blog since July 2007.
Linsey has been a technology, media, and
business lawyer and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley for the past ten
years. Before operating her solo law practice, which she started
shortly after the birth of her twins in 2004,
Linsey was Corporate Counsel for ARM, Inc., a United Kingdom-based
intellectual
property company and worked for a variety of tech companies in the
Silicon Valley, including Palm, Inc, OmniSky Corporation, and 3Com
Corporation. Linsey holds a combination JD/MBA degree from Santa Clara
University School of Law with a concentration in High Technology Law
and in Marketing and has been a member of the California State Bar
Association since
2002. She is the co-author of the book "Virtual Incorporation: A Lawyer's Guide to Forming Virtual Corporations,"
which was published by the American Bar Association in 2009. She is a
speaker and teacher, having spoken at BlogHer'08 and taught at Solo Practice University and Outside the Cube.
Linsey is very active in her community, sitting on the board of several
local organizations as President and in other Board of Director roles.
She is a twin mom (plus one more makes
three kids aged 6 and under), a twin herself, and a cancer survivor. In
addition to writing at Silicon Valley Moms Blog, she writes
at her personal blog, Me Too You, and at her twins club's blog Mad About Multiples. Linsey handles business development, advertising and legal issues for SV Moms Group.

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About DC Metro Moms Blog & Our Contributors

DC Metro Moms Blog is a collaborative group of moms writing about their lives in Washington, D.C., where moms live and work in the shadow of the Capitol, Beltway driving is the adventure sport of choice, the Mall is flanked by national monuments instead of anchor stores, and bipartisan playdates easily gain constituency approval.

Aimee Olivo is the mom of two beautiful boys, Lucas and Nathaniel,
and the wife of an amazing and supportive husband, Abel. She's
now a stay-at-home mom (who is rarely actually home!) and a community
volunteer who tries to live by the principle that each one of us has the
responsibility to help make our world a better place.

Aimee believes in kindness and loves lists. And, if you invite her to
your meeting, you can pretty much be assured that she will volunteer to
do something!

Aimee blogs about her busy but very fun life at Smiling
Mama and about family-friendly activities in Prince George's
County, MD at Out by Ten.

Amiemoved
to DC in 1993 to save the world, leaving behind a challenging
eight-week career as a Christmas hire for a large department store in
St. Petersburg, Florida. Her political science degree from Tulane University
was never intended to be used in the Nation's capital, but nearly
fifteen years later and still working in politics, she's reluctantly
ready to admit that it might have come in handy. Though if she's
honest, she learned more about being a successful political consultant
by slaving away for years at large reproductive health non-profit, the
fact that helps to allay her guilt over now working to increase the
political voice of corporate America.

Nowadays,
Amie is raising three boys (11, 5 and 3) with her husband in the same
Northern Virginia suburb where he grew up. She maintains a sneaking
suspicion that her in-laws are enjoying the fact that she is enduring
the same little league politics that they survived oh so many years
ago. When not at the ball field,
she's trying not to kill the plants in her garden, hanging out on the
corner jawing with her neighbors or off to the family beach house in Rehoboth Beach, DE. Amie started her personal blog
in 2006 as a place to dump the random thoughts floating through her
head. The unexpected side effect has been an introduction to a
fascinating community and a much lighter, humorous perspective on life.

Amy grew up in rural Pennsylvania exactly five miles from where her great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather lived after moving to the colonies from Germany.Thinking it was about to time to broaden the family's horizons, Amy convinced a Texan that moving to Washington, DC, was a great compromise and thus began her life as a Federal government wife keeping house in the DC 'burbs.

Before becoming a mom, Amy survived a few years as a middle school English and drama teacher where she alternated between teaching angry youth the importance of paragraph structure and asking a basement classroom filled with 38 tweens to play charades...and receive a grade for doing so.Life at home with two unruly little ones has proven to be far more rewarding, and Amy has built a freelance writing turned social media marketing career in order to stay out of the classroom.This arrangement benefits not only her children but the many other unsuspecting children who would have had to suffer through her interpretation of Animal Farm.

Amy launched her personal blog,Resourceful Mommy, in the summer of 2008, and began pro-blogging and marketing shortly after.Her blogger network, Global Influence, and weekly Twitter parties continue to take most of her non-parenting time while her writing remains her (often neglected) passion.Occasionally she finds time to clean and cook, though not often enough to mention, and sleep has moved on to the endangered species activity list as well.While the Texan may not agree, she still thinks it's all worth it and loves her life as a mom outside of the Beltway.

Another transplant to the DC metro area from the Keystone state,
Amy M. is a Reading Specialist who taught high school English in two of
the area’s highest-performing counties. As much as she loved a heated
discussion on The Taming of the Shrew or to teach the parts of
speech, Amy—the naïve young thing she was--actually thought life would
be easier as a stay-at-home mom. Three babies and four years later,
she will quickly say that being at home with her children is NOT
easier, and, though her children are what she is most proud of in her
life, there are days when she tries to sneak into her husband’s
briefcase and enjoy a quiet commute to anywhere. She’s just now
emerging from the fog of non-stop dirty diapers, sleeplessness, and
bottle-washing and feels pumped that she can finally (almost) carry on
a coherent conversation with adults and leave the house with two
matching earrings.

A lover of backyard happy hours, good
beer, and any chance to laugh with her three sisters, Amy is a
testament to the fact that sometimes blind dates actually do work out
and you can meet your prince charming-- even if the date is set up by
your mother-in-law and he’s broken his leg on a soccer field the week
before. You just better hope with all your might that the stars are
aligned and that maybe, just maybe, you did a few things right in your
life. Currently, Amy’s navigating her way through cyber-world on her
site, teachmama,
which chronicles the sneaky ways she tries to fit some kind of learning
into her children’s daily lives. And in the short amount of time that
she’s not busy tutoring other students, planning activities for her
local MOMS’ group, or dragging her three kids to the area’s incredible monuments, museums, or zoo,
she’s probably skipping off to her pilates class, pounding the pavement
in her ‘hood, or daydreaming about getting flames painted onto the side
of her mini-van.

.

A Michigan native, Claire Jess moved to Northern Virginia
after college to work at a feminist non-profit and returned in 2000
after getting master’s degrees in English and women’s studies. Having
studied critical pedagogy, she tried to apply theory to practice while
teaching high school English in Northern Virginia. Five years and too
many pregnant students later, Claire was about to throw in the towel
when she happily found herself in the family way and left the classroom
in spring 2006 when her son, E, was born. In the evenings, she tutors
kids whose parents have too much money and does copyediting work (when
she takes the time to look for it).

Claire hopes to
return to a social justice field at some point but for now is focused
on being a happy, natural-minded/green and yet decidedly suburban mama,
sometimes-conflicting identities she explores in her blog Crunchy-Chewy Mama. She also blogs about her evolving relationship to mothering (a boy!) at Mama’s Mouth. Her blog Inexact Science: Raising Healthy Families
is her public way-TMI: either a soapbox proselytizing about alternative
medicine and nutrition or an enlightening account of Claire’s holistic
health journey, depending on which side of Whole Foods you stand on.

Born and raised in Connecticut, Dawn went off to school in western New
York, only to be lured to Prince George's County, Maryland, after graduation by her
then-fiance who had transferred to UMD. Twelve years later, Dawn,
now-hubby and three whackjob kids still call PG County their home,
appreciating the small town environment in their immediate community
and the short metro ride to DC. (And yes, we DO call it PG!) When she
was still a respectable income-earner, Dawn spent her days with
preschoolers as a lab school teacher, but when her child care costs
outweighed her income level, she made the jump to SAHM-dom. Most days
are a mixture of preschool-at-home, 1950's housewifely duties, and pure
craziness.

Dawn lives a vicarious life online, blogging for a small, yet for some reason loyal, audience at my thoughts exactly,
where she blathers on about nothing much, but with a ridiculously high
word count. When she's not blogging or tackling screaming children,
she's got her nose buried in a book, even if it means faking a
stomachache to read in the bathroom in peace for 15 minutes. (Ahem.) She is
thrilled to share her love of books as a staff reviewer on the
collaborative book review blog, 5 Minutes for Books.
Joining the DC Metro Moms is like going to a party where everyone else
is infinitely cooler than you, but you're glad just to be invited.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Diana Funk was not raised by wolves,
though you are forgiven for making that assumption. When she's not
eating her young, she's busy keeping them alive
raising them in Northern Virginia. By "them," she means "her," since
she only has one child at the moment (an exuberant 23-month- old
daughter), but she’s hoping to be knocked up in a
family way again soon. In fact, this whole parenting thing is still a
bit of an unexpected thrill for her, since Madeleine (aka Lulu) was a
test tube baby and Diana wasn't ever sure she would actually get
pregnant (infertility journey – thrills! excitement! hormones! –
chronicled here). Diana was born in Brooklyn, NY, but grew up in New Orleans, y’all, and northwestern New Jersey, you guys. She
headed for the Mid-Atlantic to attend University of Maryland at College
Park, where she earned both a BA degree (English) and an MRS degree
(she met her husband as an undergrad). She and
Joe have been married almost 12 years, but were married twice: ever the
romantics, they eloped on their lunch hour to secure dental insurance
for Joe. 16 months and a root canal later, they had a more formal affair.

A former
human resources manager, Diana traded the pleasures of disciplining
employees for disciplining her toddler full-time, and has come to
realize that people tend to make the same discipline-worthy mistakes at
age 2 that they make at age 25. When she’s not chasing her kid around, Diana tries to manage the pet sitting business she’s owned for six years, her blog about life with Lulu, and all manner of daily chaos that surrounds her.

xxxxx

Devra currently resides in Northern Virginia and is an author of the under-the-radar-cult-hit book "Mommy Guilt: Learn To Worry Less, Focus on What Matters Most and Raise Happier Kids" and Spanish edition "Mama Culpable." Devra and her family moved to The DC 3 years ago from the South of Illinois. Prior to that, she lived in Kansas, Louisiana, California, Arizona, Connecticut, and New York. It would be easy to assume Devra is a Suburban Bedouin, however Devra roams the country due to her husband's job working for the Military Industrial Complex. (AKA the United States Air Force). Devra is the mother of Son One and Son Two. Son One is a 6th grade Tween and Son Two is a second grader who seriously wishes he were older than Son One.

When Devra's OB announced, "Congratulations, it's a Non-Immunity to Rubella!" Devra put her clinical social work career in the freezer. When she was able to get a booster shot, alongside her first son, she put her career on defrost and returned to helping families once again. Devra has worn many professional hats from School Social Worker to Director of Volunteer Services for a hospice. Devra is co-founder of Parentopia, LLC along with certified parent education and child development specialist Aviva Pflock. Devra and Aviva travel the country speaking at conferences and fundraisers as well as conducting workshops and seminars for audiences of all kinds. Aviva and Devra have a mission to absolve guilt...One mom(or dad!) at a time! Parenthood may not always be fun, but it should at least be enjoyable!

Devra's commentary appears in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Arizona Republic, Parents Magazine, Woman's World Magazine, BabyTalk, American Baby, Fit Pregnancy, Cookie Magazine, The Globe and Mail and many others. Devra has been a guest on NBC, Fox and CBS television stations. In all her spare time, Devra can often be found at Wegmans wandering the aisles looking for Sarah and blogging with Aviva over at Parentopia.

Dumb Mom is the mom
behind the popular humor and parenting blog parenting BY dummies.
Outsmarted by her children daily as she attempts to navigate motherhood,
childhood, and everything in between she enjoys sharing her stories of
failure and success with you in a humorous, heartfelt, and honest way.
She may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but she is definitely the
best dressed (an advantage completely lost by being inside of a shed) as
she prides herself on being a handbag role model for the masses. Dumb
Mom is not your everyday mom blogger. She doesn't craft (not well
anyway). She doesn't share many healthful dinner alternatives (because
she likes bacon, and bacon flavored products). And, child centered
activities are not her forte (although she has come up with some
interesting child centered activities designed to keep kids busy while
she partakes in adult centered activities). But, she loves her Dudes
like nobody's business and is making a real go of being a good, okay, a
decent mom, despite not being able to match wits with a toddler.

Amanda Rodriguez, the mom behind the dummy, is a former middle school
language arts and social studies teacher, turned stay-at-home-mom,
turned graduate student, turned professional photographer, freelance
writer, problogger and general director of awesomeness. She reluctantly
resides in Maryland with her husband and three small Dudes where she
laments leaving the California sunshine on a daily basis.

In 1997, Elaine — a native Kansan— clicked her ruby slippers together three times, but rather than heading back home, she landed in DC where she put her public policy degree to work. She didn't know at the time she'd eventually own a home in the suburbs, be married to a government employee, and have two incredible children. But then, she’s heard that from a lot of moms at the playgrounds around Arlington. Besides reveling in the chance to see the world through the eyes of her children, she also maintains a part-time job at a very family-friendly nonprofit.

Her mom, still back in Kansas, off-handedly commented one day about
how nice her neighbor’s granddaughter’s blog was for purposes of keeping
in touch, and thus her own blog came to
life. That— and it was a hobby she could maintain in those precious few
hours between her children’s bedtime and hers. Prior to being a mom, she
was an avid potter and chocolate maker. She hopes to return to both of
these hobbies once her children age a bit.

A mom, a teacher, a
wife, a runner, and a cancer survivor,
Elena S. been in the Washington DC area
since 1992 when she started her undergraduate degree at the George
Washington
University.Her studies of
international affairs and Russian studies may not be applicable to her
role as
an Advanced Academic Resource Teacher in the Virginia suburbs, but the
time at
GW did bind Elena to the DC metro area for all that it has to offer.Being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s
lymphoma at 23 made Elena a fighter, and provided a perspective that was
life
altering.Life was no longer about
watching, it was about doing.And
so, after running (jogging really) two Marine Corps Marathons, Elena
became a
mom to a spirited and independent daughter (Principessa) who always
keeps
things “interesting.”

Elena spent the better part of two years writing
about her
profession to achieve National Board of Professional Teaching Standards
(NBPTS)
certification.Throughout that
time, it became clear that she needed to share her personal story as
well.Elena began writing A Day in the Life
in September
2009 to reflect on what it really means to be a cancer survivor, have a
child,
go through a divorce, fight the running/non running roller coaster, and
find
herself in love and getting remarried.Writing about the journey, or the chaos depending on the day,
morphed
into a constant look out for the funny, sarcastic, sometimes even sad
moments
that each day brings.

Elena became a publishing mom for Fairfax Macaroni Kid in
March of
2010, where in addition to writing about the joys of day to day life on A Day in
the Life, she
adds her spin on activities, resources, and ideas for local parents.When not teaching, parenting, writing,
running, or attending Zumba classes, Elena tries to keep things brief on
twitter as caramma
or MacKidFairfaxVA.

Evonne grew up in
Connecticut just outside of "The City" but has called Arlington, Va.,
home since 1998. Although the traffic here makes her bonkers, she can't
imagine living anywhere else -- international cuisine; free, world-class
museums; miles of bike trails; and a morning commute past the Memorials
can't be beat.

By day, she's a web project manager for a
non-partisan health policy foundation, but her true love is writing and
expects to get her masters in creative nonfiction from Johns Hopkins in
the Fall of 2010.

When she's not hanging out with her husband and
her little girl (2 1/2), she likes nothing better than to settle down
on the couch with a glass of red wine or coffee (depending on the time
of day) and read the Sunday New York Times or Lucky
magazine (depending on how intellectual she's feeling). Yoga is her
sport of choice. She's an unequivocal INFP (Introverted, Intuitive,
Feeling, Perceptive; "Still Waters Run Deep").

Evonne writes about
navigating the fine line between self, mother, and wife at Arlington Mama
and tweets from @jumpinjavagrrl.

.

xxxxx

Gayleis a native Washingtonian who grew up, and still lives, within DC limits, a fact she will proudly tell anyone who will listen. She took a detour through Providence, Manhattan, Boston and San Francisco in her 20s, but is happy to be back in the nation's capital. She has twin 3 year-old daughters who keep her busy and tired but always entertained. Passions include reality TV (though that one is thankfully waning), Bottle Caps candy, the NYT crossword on the rare days she can get to it, The Police, her dog, and reading. She blogs about modern fiction at Every Day I Write The Book. Gayle spent 6 long years practicing law but has since left for greener pastures. These days, she works at a strategic communications company where she specializes in social media outreach, which means she gets to talk to a lot of bloggers. She's not particularly interested in politics, so don't ask her who's going to get the nomination.

Janelle Marshall is
now officially a WestMidEast Coaster. She’s had the privilege of living
on the West Coast, Midwest and now the East Coast. As a recent
transplant from Chicago, she and her family are now living in Richmond,
VA. After living in Chicago for almost ten years, Janelle and her
husband left the bustling city life of Chicago to be closer to family
and get more support raising their 2 ½ year old daughter.Being
a mom is one of the greatest joys of her life and blogging has become a
way to make sense of motherhood. She also loves to write and has a
master’s degree in journalism. When she’s not writing she’s teaching
undergraduate online classes.

Now that life is a little more
laidback, she’s investing her time in family and hoping to add to her
brood soon. With a background in nonprofit program management, she
misses working full-time, but is blown away that she gets to work from
home and raise her daughter.There are some major
differences between Chicago and Richmond (people are SO polite), but
she’s done this before and she’s excited to see what Virginia has to
offer. You can also find her blogging on her personal site
Mama Daisy.

xxxxx

Jean, a.k.a. Stimey moved to Maryland in the fall of 2003. Prepared
to hate DC life, she was pleasantly surprised to find her home and
community here. She is now firmly ensconced in the DC-area mom life.
She is the mom of Sam, born in 2001; Jack, born in 2003; and Quinn,
born in 2005. All three of her kids were born in different states: Sam
in California, Jack in Alaska, and Quinn in Maryland. Jean will be
forced to live in Maryland for the rest of her child-bearing years so
she doesn't have to have any more kids.

Jean spends most of her time playing with her kids and her friends,
writing, working part-time from home, and starting a videography
business. Jean's main blog is Stimeyland, where she writes about all of the above, including parenting an autistic child. In addition to Stimeyland, Jean writes about decluttering at The Junk Pyramid and reviews products at Things and Stuff Reviews.

Once upon a time, Jenni was living
the not-so-glamorous life of a non-profit fundraiser in D.C. Upon
graduating from the University of Maryland in College Park with degrees
in both Women's Studies and Journalism, she decided she could never be a
"real" journalist and "work for the man," so a career saving the world
one dollar at a time seemed just the thing. After several years of
bouncing around women's organizations and direct service providers in
the District working way to hard for way to little compensation she
finally took a "big job," got married to her high school sweetheart, and
bought a house in the suburbs.

Jenni's next completely unoriginal move was to get
pregnant and have her fist baby, Oscar, in July 2007. She opted to stay
on maternity leave indefinitely (take that, Women's Studies!),
beginning her career as a stay-at-home mom. Her second son, Miles
William, was born exactly 18 months and two days after Oscar's birth.
Jenni enjoys good beer, mediocre wine, books of all kinds, and
excellent conversation. She also maintains that she is funnier in
person and has never lost an argument. She blogs about
barely containing the chaos that is raising two boys so close in age at Oscarelli, where you will often find her
complaining about her lack of sleep, unsuccessful potty training, and
her husband's inability to put his socks in the hamper. Which is
exactly THREE FEET AWAY from the spot he dropped them on the floor.

.xx

Jessica
is a California native that came to DC in 1998 as a straight-laced
Senate staffer by day, Adams Morgan bar crawler by night. She
transitioned to
life as a public relations executive and newlywed Home Depot frequenter
at the turn of the century. Her current and favorite persona is that
of the minivan
driving, bass-booming housewife and mom to a five year old son and
three
year old daughter.

Jessica writes A Parent in Silver Spring,
a blog that makes the rich resources available for parents and kids in
the DC area more apparent, served with a side of humor. She is a freelance writer, featured in The Washington Post Weekend, as well as a freelance communications & social media consultant.

Jessica is surprised everyday by how much she rejoices in being
a mother, how crazy being a mom is making her and how she can fluctuate
between the two feelings in the span of a second. She loves snuggling
with her kids, her hot IT husband, hanging out with any of her four
siblings, 12 siblings-in-law and 18 nieces and nephews, American
literature, Smithsonian institutions, early morning runs, late night schemes, overpriced jeans, Real Simple, California bands and Outer Banks vacations. Much to Jodifur's dismay and her neighbors' delight, she always has a box of wine on tap in her kitchen.

Jill Berry is a
writer/blogger/twitterer/Facebooker/social networker by day and a
chauffeur by night. She works up to the second before her children get
off their respective school buses. The quiet of her dining room is
shattered by the clatter of shoes, the clunk of backpacks, and the
wailing of children who are tired and cranky from the school day. The
calm of her writing day becomes the eye of the storm as she drives from
one activity to the next. She is a keen planner who has figured out how
to get three children to two different activities with only the bare
minimum of tantrums. Jill may not always be on time, but by golly she
gets her children to their myriad of activities: volleyball, karate,
swimming, clarinet, lacrosse, and religious education classes.

Jill is coming off a stress-free SAHM stint with her youngest, now a
1st
grader. The reality of future college tuition has drawn her back to the
workforce. Prior to her SAHM-ness she was a senior production editor in
charge of books, manuals, and journals for a health care publisher.

As a mom of preteens and teens, Jill is all too aware of the dangers
lurking on the internet. She is proud to say that she is a Test Drive
Mom for Yoursphere:
an online site for preteens and teens that puts safety first.

J.J.aka JavaMom is a native of Miami, FL, but moved to Northern VA in 2002 from Silicon Valley – with pit stops in Missouri and Georgia in between. In her first career, as a television reporter and anchor, she especially loved crime stories, even eliciting a murder confession on camera. A move to California accidentally led to a career in Marketing Communications for high tech companies – which may or may not be much different from chasing down criminals, depending on your perspective! She is also the editor of the third and fourth editions of the book, Find It Onlineby Alan Schlein.

No longer chasing criminals or Silicon Valley execs, J.J. now chases two small children, JavaGirl and JavaBoy during the day, and dashes off to meetings for the Junior League of Northern Virginia at night. She couldn’t accomplish any of it without the help of her saintly spouse, JavaDad. To keep her sanity J.J. blogs about life, family, technology and anything else that amuses her atCaffeine and a Prayer.

xxxxx

Joannehas always been crazy about Washington, D.C., but finally got to move to the area in 1988. After spending a decade in the "glamorous" world of broadcast news, Joanne gave law school a spin, practicing law at firms and a government agency in D.C. It finally became apparent to Joanne that writing (not the legal kind!) was her real passion, so to ring in the new century she bagged her law practice and took up freelance writing full time.

Joanne has a eight-year-old daughter who she and her husband adopted from China. She is also stepmom to two adult daughters. When she's not writing, blogging or mainlining Project Runway reruns, she's thinking about how she can get more stamps in her passport and how to convince her husband that it's time to drink those bottles of Ornellaia and Solaia he's been saving.Joanne lives with her daughter and husband in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., just close enough to be able to almost-honestly say she lives in Washington!

Joanne's freelance work has appeared in many national and regional publications, including The Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, The Washington Examiner, as well as on The Huffington Post, MSN and Marketplace Radio. She's trying to compete with Sarah to see how many blogs she can write for. Joanne blogs and exercises her punditry muscles as PunditMom, her personal/political blog, as well as blogging at MomsRising, MOMocrats and is a Contributing Editor for Politics & News at BlogHer.

.Jodi
is one of the few native Washingtonians actually living in Washington.
Besides a short stint in Connecticut for college, she has lived in the
DC area her whole life. She remembers the old "Giant" grocery store,
and knows why DCers rush to the grocery store to buy bread, milk,
toilet paper, and bottled water when they sense that first flake of
snow.

Jodi grew up in Montgomery County, Md, and went to law
school in Downtown D.C. Jodi now lives in Montgomery County and works
part-time as an attorney in child abuse. She lives with her husband,
Doug, her preschool son, Michael, as well as a dog, Foster, who has
many, many issues. She started Jodifurbecause
her husband kept telling her she reads so many blogs so might as well
write one. She also puts her expensive legal education to good use as
the celebrity legal corespondent on mamapop.com, a pop culture blog.

Karen G. is a native Clevelander who has called the D.C. area home since
sometime in the Reagan administration. She is a journalist married to a
journalist - she met her husband on press row covering a basketball
game. That was 17 years, several beat changes (from sports reporter to
parenting writer to feature writer), two houses and one kid ago. She
practiced juggling a busy career at The Washington Times while being a
work-at-home mom, PTA president and super swim team volunteer.

These
days, Karen freelances, ghost writes, blogs and parents a teenager in
Reston, where she would run for mayor if the town had such a thing. She
is exploring the social media universe and no longer is insulted that
her body of work may be relegated to 140 characters at a time. In fact,
it is helping her write more concisely.

Kate grew up in Washington, DC, and clings to the idea that deep
down she is still a "city person." But after several moves further and
further into Northern Virginia, she is starting to admit that life in
the burbs has its perks. There is something to be said for unlimited
parking wherever you go and the lack of people asking you for money
when you walk out your front door. This financially driven trajectory
out of her hometown has included Arlington, McLean and now Reston. She
expects to be in Leesburg by the end of 2012.

Kate's family includes a son diagnosed with PDD-NOS (Autism
spectrum) and boy/girl twins. All were born within 18 months. And no -
none of it was planned. Her husband would like to get a dog to step up
the level of chaos, but Kate would rather wait until everyone is potty
trained and she's finished picking up human poop. Because of her oldest
son's delays, she is putting her career on hold for a while to take a
more active role in his early intervention. She will also be using this
time to focus on her writing and figure out what she wants to be when
she grows up...That is, if she does in fact survive the Summer.

.

Kimberly Petro is a DC area native growing up in and around the
beltway until the age of 18 when she moved to New York City to attend
The American Musical and Dramatic Academy.
After graduation, Kimberly was accepted to the National Conservatory of
Dramatic Arts in DC but instead of further schooling she opted to run
off to Vegas and elope. She's a little crazy like that.

Her husband's career as a corporate executive allowed/forced Kimberly
and her
growing family to live around the country from Oklahoma to Georgia to
the SF Bay Area giving birth to two beautiful girls along the way.
Kimberly finally returned to her DC area roots when the family moved to
Virginia in 2004. Shortly after, she found her passion for expression
and forum for sarcasm by way of blogging and later, freelance writing.

When she’s not typing away on her laptop, Kimberly enjoys being a Jazzercise instructor, loves to garden, throw parties and is currently trying to survive raising a teen and a tween
daughter while keeping a smile on everyone’s face.

Kimberly resides in Fauquier County, VA, a.k.a. “The Ding Dang Woods”, with her 2
daughters, 2 dogs, and 2 cats but only 1 husband. You can also find her on her
personal blog Petroville
and on Twitter @Kimberle.

Kiran Ferrandino, aka Masala Chica ended up in Northern Virginia after fleeing New Jersey in the mid-90's to pursue her college education. While at the University of Virgina, she learned a lot about the world and despite never believing it possible, ended up settling down south of the Mason Dixon line. Kiran works for a Software Company in the ever exciting and demanding world of Project Management. (hey guys, guys! come back! we're not done yet. Thanks).

Raised in an Indian household herself (hence the Masala), Kiran found her happily ever after with her husband, John, who is half Italian and half Puerto Rican (and that's where the Chica comes from). She lovingly calls her two children her quarter-riquenas.

She will admittedly tell you that she drinks too much wine, loves going to Costco just a tad too much and has settled into her suburban life just a wee bit more comfortably than she expected when living her fabulous single life in Arlington in her 20's. She loves running, playing guitar, Bikram yoga, arguing with her husband, and writing. Her claim to fame (ok not fame, but it was cool) was that she used to be the lead singer for a DC cover band. While not yet a Soccer Mom, she has been a "Soccer Wife" for years now and is ready to accept the inevitable once her kiddies can kick a ball.

.

.

Leticia (aka Tech Savvy Mama)
never had any inkling that she would end up in the DC Metro Area. She
now finds herself loving everything about living here except Beltway
traffic. Born and raised in Northern California's Silicon Valley, this
Bay Area native spent 6 years as a New Englander and then moved to the
DC Metro Area to be closer to her now-husband and teach for a local
school system. Leticia is now the mom of two children and a technology
magnet coordinator in a local school system.

Leticia started her own blog, Tech Savvy Mama,
where she uses her background in early childhood education and
classroom technology integration to guide parents in selecting quality
technology products for their children. She is also the City Editor for
Being Savvy Washington DC, where she writes about fun activities for kids ages 2-6 with an educational twist.

Lindsay moved to
the DC area six months ago from the City of Brotherly Love (kicking and
screaming) with her husband, 2 kids and their dog, Camille. She spends
the majority of her time chasing after her two boys, who are 2 1/2 years
and 10 months old. She began her blog Be Nice to Mama soon
after she moved from her wonderful community in Philadelphia to the DC
Metro area. Writing was cathartic and was a way for her to begin
recreating her social support network and to reach out to other parents.
Now she uses Be Nice To Mama to bring humor and reflection into her
daily life of raising two energetic little ones. When she leaves her
"mama hat" at home, she works as a Registered Nurse providing home
visits to premature babies, and is completing a Nurse Midwifery Program
at the University of Pennsylvania. Very soon she will be delivering
babies and will be whispering, "Be Nice to Mama" to each of them.

Michelle, aka Wife and Mommy, moved to the DC area when she was
two. Other than living a few hours away for four years of college and
spending a year in Asia, she's lived in the NoVA area for 29 years.
She and the love of her life, The
Husband, have been married for seven years. They met and married at
the same church they
still attend today. They have three young children: Bito was born in
2003,
Cupcake in 2005, and BabyMuffin in 2007. J-dog, the family lab, rounds
out their family and home, although the kids have some crazy notion
that they are getting a cat sometime soon. Life is never boring in
their cozy, comfortable house!

Before becoming a mom, Michelle was an educator, teaching middle school science. Now she
works from home part time when she's not keeping house, shuttling
the kids to their activities and participating in activities at her
church. Being a stay home mom has been her most fulfilling career and
she's glad to keep notes of it in her blog, Wife and Mommy.

Michelle is a fan of the Orioles, the Redskins and anyone who is
playing the Yankees. She loves a thick juicy steak, a draft beer, a
bowl of
ice-cream and a good book, but not necessarily all at the same time.
Her lifelong goals include getting back to her pre-pregnancy body and
finding memory some day.

..

Nicole Crowley is a Washington native. She moved away to produce and report TV news. But DC kept calling to her, so she moved back to be a national radio producer. The first week she was back at work in DC, her girlfriends convinced her to go down to Dewey Beach with them for Labor Day Weekend. She reluctantly went, and met her husband. Turned out he was a DC native too and they remembered each other from high school.

Since they got ‘hitched’, Nicole has worked at Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill and been a freelance writer for the past several years. The freelancing flexibility has been nice while she’s been busy with her greatest accomplishment to date: her young, now-elementary-age son. She considers being a mom a privilege and a source of joy… although there have been some moments amidst throwing-up or potty-training when she has said, “How does everybody else do this so well?” With that said,

Nicole likes to concentrate on the good stuff, that’s the rule of her blog, BananaBlueberry.

Rebekah is a
working mother with an over-developed sense of
irreverence and a stubborn affection for the non-profit sector where she
has
made her career.She blames her parents
who told her to go forth and do good in the world instead of telling her
to be
a glamorous socialite with scads of money and expensive shoes.

Rebekah grew up in
Rochester, NY where Wegman's forever spoiled her for other grocery
stores. She arrived in the DC area in 1996, left in 2000, and returned
in 2003, which by her math, means she's lived in either Northern VA, DC,
or Montgomery County for 11 years and has spent far too much time in
the different DMVs changing her automobile registration to stay current.

She and her husband
recently gave up their tiny, little,
rented love nest on Capitol Hill in favor of buying cute house with a
yard (a real
yard!) and a playroom (a real playroom!) and a guest room (a real guest
room!)
but without a dishwasher in Montgomery County. Their marriage remains
strong
despite sharing dishwashing duty.Together, they are attempting to keep pace with their adorable,
brilliant, funny, and extremely energetic two-year old son.

When not
working, parenting or blogging, Rebekah wanders
around the music section in Target wondering who the people on the CD
cases are
and why they’re all so young.She blogs
about her life at Mom-In-A-Million.

Robin (also known as noteverstill) has four- and
two-year-old
daughters, an infant son, a lovely husband who works many more than
full-time hours and a full-time career of her own in government in the
suburbs of Washington, DC. She takes her three little loves with her to
work where they spend their days in a childcare program tucked gently
into the building where she spends her quietest eight hours. Robin
loves this arrangement because she loves both her career and that she
is always available to her children as needed for breastfeeding or
boo-boo kissing or story time or extra-special lunch dates
in the cafeteria. At the end of each day she packs up her work and
packs up her children and they commute together back home and back to
Daddy. She believes in wishing on first stars and
dandelion
puffs; that the glass really is half full; and that imagination can
never be too nurtured. She has a station wagon filled with test
subjects to prove it. Let’s just not discuss that in her world
the half-full glass is often really a juice box, and that occasionally
it gets squirted all over the rear-view mirror (and the back of her
head). You can always read more about Robin’s parenting philosophies
and her family’s antics and adventures at her personal blog, The Not-Ever-Still Life,
or on Twitter @noteverstill.

Sandie is a recent New York transplant to the DC 'burbs. She misses three of the five boroughs terribly (two not so much), and the thin-crust slabs of pizza and fresh bagels with lox sold on every street corner in New York City but nowhere else. But she loves her house (a yard! a white picket fence! for way under $2 million!) and the terrific public school system, and relishes still being a Metro-ride away from some of the best museums in the world.

After more than eight years as a full-time journalist, Sandie's now at home, where she juggles multiple freelance deadlines, a six-year-old son, and three-year-old daughter (and hardly ever drops any of them). She also blogs about motherhood, marriage, and movies at Urban Mama. Whenever she's not chasing after or chauffering her preschooler and kindergartener around Montgomery County, Sandie writes movie and DVD reviews for Common Sense Media and entertainment feature articles for Daily Variety..

Sarahlives in Northern Virginia with her husband and three year old boy/girl twins. She moved to the D.C. area after spending most of her life in Florida (Tampa, Orlando, and Ft. Lauderdale).

She was a stay at home mom until she realized that people would actually pay her to write. You can find her writing at Sarah and the Good Squad, BlogHer, Draft Day Suitand about 40 other blogs.In her spare time Sarah is a raging fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Bravo reality television and good food. Her hobbies include singing, drinking beer, potty training, blogging, writing bios about her self in third person and stealing jokes like the one about writing about her self in third person from Jason at Pet Cobra.

Stacy Kravitz is an almost-native Washingtonian having lived in the
DC-area since she was ten-years old. She grew up in rural
horse-country Virginia, attended college in DC and settled as a
singleton in the Maryland suburbs. Before meeting her darling
sports-enthused husband she drifted along a career-less job path of
nannying, librarian-work and the uber-unfulfilling executive
assistantship. Stacy landed her dream job in December 2007 when her
son was born. She now spends her days changing diapers, blowing
raspberries on a cute bloated-poochy baby
toddler belly and chasing after her little home-wrecker of a kid as he
empties shelves and drawers at lightening speed. When the kid naps,
she writes. Ergo, that
explains the ebbs and flows of her productivity.

In her "spare" time
she often takes on home-owner projects like painting the kitchen and
power-washing the deck. It has been said that she makes a great
husband because she is the home repair person. When the gardening dirt
and car grease have been scrubbed off her hands she can cook a mean and
hearty meal usually opting for something grilled and something veggie,
and peanut butter cream pie, of course.

Her friends
not-so-jokingly say that she lives in a zoo but four cats, a dog, a
husband and a baby are not enough to knock her down. Stacy has been
blogging about it since 2005 as The Fabulous Miss. S.

.

Stephanie, aka Lawyer Mama,
ditched the full time lawyer gig in the Summer of 2008 to concentrate
on turning Virginia into a Blue state. Along the way, she started two
businesses: a legal services and writing group and a portrait
photography business, LightHearted Photography. Stephanie is the New Media and Outreach Director for Blue Star Families,
a non-profit group acting as a bridge between military family members,
politicians and the civilian world. She is also the editor of Being Savvy Virginia Beach.

Steph and her computer
geek husband T. moved from DC to Chesapeake, Virginia in the Summer of
2005 in
an attempt to get away from D.C. traffic and closer to the beach. Steph
and T have two little boys born only 15 months apart in 2004 and 2006.
Hollis and Holden are known collectively as H&H. And yes, they
really are just as much
trouble as twins. No matter how hectic life gets, Steph always wears
cute shoes. And then she blogs about them.

When she's not running around trying to remember her own name, Steph spends her time swimming, taking photographs,
and reading. Oh, wait...that was before Steph had kids. Now she and
her husband of 14 years just try to catch a few hours of sleep and
maybe sneak in a date or two. She writes about her life, love,
frustrations and joys at Lawyer Mama and her photography at LightHearted Photography: The Blog. Stephanie can also be found ranting about politics at MOMocrats, a collaborative site written by progressive mothers who are so damn smart, they intimidate Stephanie at times.

Stephanie
Stearns Dulli a.k.a. Minky, is an L.A. girl recently transplanted to the
D.C. area, having followed Prince Charming to the District by way of
Akron. Yes, Akron. She loves D.C. but is still trying to grasp the
concept of winter footwear and layering clothes. So far, not so good.
She is, however, grateful that no matter whether she is shielding her
eyes from sun or snow, her big sunglasses are still at the ready. She is
obsessed with her son Max, great handbags, and fighting time as it
tries to march across her face. A real live professional actor,
Stephanie made her living doing commercials, soaps, and theatre in Los
Angeles and is slowly working her way into the D.C. scene. That is if
she doesn't keep getting distracted by snuggling her baby and munching
on his toes. He's delicious.

A social creature, Stephanie
started blogging because living in a new town and being a stay at home
mom left her with no one to joke around with...and well, the snarky had
to go somewhere! She leapt into blogging knowing nothing about it, and
was (thankfully!) welcomed with open arms into the blogosphere despite
her rampant abuse of ellipses and exclamation marks. A requisite
Starbucks and gym addict, her special skills include sleeping while
wearing a tiara, being a pied piper of stray cats, and knowing all the
choreography to The Freshbeats and The Wiggles. No, she's not available
for private shows. When not blogging at DC Metro Moms, Stephanie can be
found plastering the internet with pictures of her cute kid at
www.dialmforminky.com

Sueis a native of the DC area. She went to college in
Ohio, but came back after graduating, followed by the boy who would
become her husband. She lives inside the Beltway, just down the road
from the University of Maryland, and can’t picture ever living outside
the bounds of 495.

In her former life, she was Metro-riding law librarian. Currently,
she is a minivan driving, stay-at-home mom to four kids, two boys and
two girls, who keep her on the road, on her toes and, more often than
she would like, in the laundry room. In her free time, Sue enjoys
watching the Discovery Health Channel, drinking margaritas and thinking
up ways to stay in shape without actually exercising. She blogs about
life and parenthood at My Party of 6 and is a contributor on MomSpark.

Susan McCorkindale was born and raised in New Jersey. She loves
Bruce Springsteen, the Jersey Shore, and the New York Giants. A
graduate of Marymount Manhattan College, Susan spent five long, hard
minutes pursuing an acting career before making a detour into
marketing. She has held top spots at Family Circle and Popular Science
magazines, and since 2005 has written advertising copy on a freelance
basis from the comfort of her 500-acre beef cattle farm in Northern
Virginia. Susan is also the author of Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl,
her laugh out loud true tale of her move from the suburbs to the
sticks, and how she learned the hard way that Manolos and manure just
don't mix.

The mother of two sons and wife of one very patient and
understanding apprentice farmer, Susan spends her free time blogging
about life on the funny farm,
teaching P.E. and running the PTO at her son's elementary school, and
reading everything Laurie Notaro, Jen Lancaster, Dave Barry, and Nora
Ephron have ever written.

.

Suziestill
calls herself a recent transplant to the DC Area, although she arrived
in March of 2006. A native Texan, she, her hubby, their three boys, and
two cats left the great State of Texas and headed to Virginia for an
adventure (actually her hubby's new job). In October of 2008 they were
joined by a little girl (and finally a bit of hormonal balance in the
family!)

While she has a Master's in Public Affairs from the University of
Texas - LBJ School of Public Affairs (Hook'Em Horns!), Suzie considers
herself retired and she now stays home and wrangles the aforementioned
kids. In her spare time she is active with the PTA, the local MOMS
Club, teaches scrapbooking classes, watches as much college football as
humanly possible, and attempts to avoid anything and everything related
to cooking. Her blog, Confessions of a Not So Well Behaved Woman chronicles her adventures in parenting, life in the DC area, and life with a house full of kids.

house full of kids.

When Thien-Kimisn’t chasing her active preschooler, she has
a blast working as a Passion Parties consultant, giving women tips and tools to take
charge of their pleasure. She met her husband during college in good ole Louisiana,
where she was born and raised.

She came to DC by way of Syracuse, NY, where she honed her
burgeoning skills as a costume designer and stitcher. Now a WAHM, she squeezes
in creative moments from sewing and crafts to playing Iron Chef with her
pantry. She also encourages art and
creativity with her daughter, while attempting to blog about it at PassionandArt.

Sarah (TravelMommy) recently moved back
to the DC area from a short stint raising camels in the Middle East.
She is constantly searching for that perfect falafel in Northern
Virginia with her husband and special-needs 1-year old (affectionately
called Potato). A former Director of Marketing for a mid-size opera
company, she has since sold herself into a life of government service,
where she works by day as a secretary and moonlights as an amateur
musician and writer.

Sarah is a contributing writer at Glee
Club Online, a fansite for the world's most awesome TV show. You can
also find her talking about trials and tribulations of life with a
medically fragile child at her own blog, Traveling Marshalls. Follow her on Twitter @TravelMommy.

Victoria a native Rhode Islander, came to the DC Metro area in 1996 as a college transfer. After a childhood of family vacations in the Capitol, dreams of becoming First Lady, and numerous ribbings of being a female Alex P. Keaton it seemed only natural to finally move there. After transferring to the University of Maryland, College Park, this true Yankee found her home and graduated with a degree in History. Many government, consulting and PR jobs, including a move to So Cal later, she is glad to be back in her element and the land of all things political and conspiracy filled. Hidden bunkers, lurking figures, dark shadows? SheÃ¢ÂÂs on it! Victoria is now happily free of corporate America and a WAHM and freelance writer as well as the creator of the blog, The Mummy Chronicles, Mummy's Product Reviews and a co-founder of Flaming Tulle, a wedding blog. Her experience and writing skills can be seen on such sites as Parent Bloggers Network, She Speaks and The Hot Mom's Club, just to name a few.

When Vicky isn't writing she can be found running after her toddler T.D. (that stands for Tiny Dictator), baking herself into a Bree Van de Kamp frenzy, flipping houses with her incredibly sane former Marine husband H, or simply resisting the urge to smoke. That alone can take up a whole day. A self-proclaimed product junkie, a sometimes reformed shopaholic, and lover of British Chick-lit and Victorian feminist writing, Vicky hopes to one day put all this great knowledge to use and write her own novel. She'ÂÂs also a rabid Terps fan and lover of all things French country. She currently resides in the Northern Virginia suburbs and dreams of moving further into her favourite city in the world, Washington, DC.

By far, her biggest challenge and greatest joy is motherhood. Jill
and her husband are the proud parents of two elementary school aged
daughters. Jill admits that she is NOT A PERFECT PARENT and fears her
daughter's teenage years. Her girls can be heard running around the
house screaming, "Mommy is blogging again!" and she needs to bribe from
time to time them with treats. Is she allowed to admit that?
On the bright side, Jill really digs living in Silicon Valley and
tries her best to blend in, praying that no one will hear her "New
Jersey accent". Unless, of course, she is royally upset.

Jill handles PR, Marketing, Business Development and outreach for this collaborative community.

PARTNER - SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP & CHIEF TECHNOLOGY MOM:Beth Blecherman (Beth B at svmoms.) Beth Blechermanis a techie turned blogger mom who is in charge of blogging technology and development for the Silicon Valley Moms Group
network. She also works on the outreach/development to obtain new
bloggers and organizing events for the network. Beth started her
career in application development, then system auditing and her last
role was Senior Manager, Computer Process Integrity, for Deloitte. Beth's personal blog is on tips, tricks, and discussions about parents use of technology for their families (Techmamas). When not blogging, she can be found on Twitter, Facebook and tooling around other new online social networking sites...

PARTNER, SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP:Tekla S. Nee,
a cofounder of the Silicon Valley Moms Group, serves as editor-in-chief
and CFO for the network of blogs. She has been writing about parenting
for more than 25 years for magazines like Parenting,BabyTalk,Working Woman, Special Reports: Family, and Better Health and Living. She blogged for five years before there was such a word, writing a weekly column about about her life with three kids for the Palo Alto Daily News. She's published three books, The Mommy Rescue Guide First Year; The Mommy Zone: Tales from the Trenches of Parenthood; and The Everything Baby's First Year Book (also published in Russian and Chinese).
And that's just in her spare time, during the day, she masquerades as a
mild-mannered technology journalist working for a major metropolitan
magazine.

PARTNER - SILICON VALLEY MOMS GROUP: Linsey Krolik joined
the management team of Silicon Valley Moms Group as a Partner in
October 2009, after serving as the company's lawyer, book club editor,
and a contributing writer for Silicon Valley Moms Blog since July 2007.
Linsey has been a technology, media, and
business lawyer and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley for the past ten
years. Before operating her solo law practice, which she started
shortly after the birth of her twins in 2004,
Linsey was Corporate Counsel for ARM, Inc., a United Kingdom-based
intellectual
property company and worked for a variety of tech companies in the
Silicon Valley, including Palm, Inc, OmniSky Corporation, and 3Com
Corporation. Linsey holds a combination JD/MBA degree from Santa Clara
University School of Law with a concentration in High Technology Law
and in Marketing and has been a member of the California State Bar
Association since
2002. She is the co-author of the book "Virtual Incorporation: A Lawyer's Guide to Forming Virtual Corporations,"
which was published by the American Bar Association in 2009. She is a
speaker and teacher, having spoken at BlogHer'08 and taught at Solo Practice University and Outside the Cube.
Linsey is very active in her community, sitting on the board of several
local organizations as President and in other Board of Director roles.
She is a twin mom (plus one more makes
three kids aged 6 and under), a twin herself, and a cancer survivor. In
addition to writing at Silicon Valley Moms Blog, she writes
at her personal blog, Me Too You, and at her twins club's blog Mad About Multiples. Linsey handles business development, advertising and legal issues for SV Moms Group.